


The Stars Have Never Fallen

by Jenett



Category: Agora (2009)
Genre: Astronomy, Growing Up, Philosophy, Teaching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-18 11:40:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16994322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenett/pseuds/Jenett
Summary: Travelling from infatuation to deep friendship is a long and perilous road. Many people don't make it.The great teachers allow space for someone to change. In this way, as in all the others.





	The Stars Have Never Fallen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Megkips](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Megkips/gifts).



The chaos swirled and swirled, clouds of smoke and confusion covering everything. Hypatia had always relied on the clarity and certainty of the light, a beacon in the dark, and now it was gone. Shadowed and stained, altered and torn. 

Her father took a long time to die, in a slow and awful death. The house echoed with the cries outside and inside. Some slaves had fled, others were injured and could not work. The simplest things like clean water, someone to stay by her father's side at all times, see to his needs, each took far too much effort. Some new crisis came stalking her every time she sat or thought she could rest for just a moment. 

In some ways, it was good to be too busy to think. Too busy to dwell on the wanton hateful destruction of the Musaeum and library. To think about what was going on, with the smoke she could still see rising and curling, if she could bear to look out from her rooftop perch. Once the stars had been comfort and solace, a sign of the order of the universe, each thing in its place, and now there was nothing. It was as if they had fallen away, leaving the darkness and the void.

***

They had few visitors. Their neighbours came, looking for slaves to borrow, for stores of food, oil, wine, when they ran out. Her father's colleagues, her colleagues, did not.

Her father would not have wanted them to see him like that, but she, oh, she yearned for someone to talk through the problems with. It had hit her, a dreadful flash of knowing, that they could not have the funeral he deserved, a grand procession in the streets from their home to the family tomb, to lay her father beside her mother, besides the other children lost too young. Beside other family, the great constellation of relationships, echoing backwards in time. 

(But not forward. She was quite sure of that now. Never forward.) 

A few of her students came to check on her, but none of the ones she could trust with this conversation, with building a proof that would withstand the rough world outside. 

She sat, listless, on a couch, when Aspasius came to her. "It is Orestes, mistress. Will you see him?" 

It could be no worse than the others. She looked up, waved a hand, and said "Show him in." 

He was clean shaven, dressed in a spotless toga, but the rest of him looked like he had had as many sleepless nights as she had had. All of them, since the fire and the destruction. 

"Your father, how is he, lady?" 

"Dying." It was the first time she had said it in that spare a word, the preciseness of a verb clarifying that this thing is happening now. Then, looking away, she said "Soon." 

Orestes was quiet for a long time, moving to sit on the couch facing her. He did not reach out to her, did not press her physically or with words. He just sat patiently. 

It was not the waiting of a class of eager students, wanting to know the wisdom she could share or the insights of the heavens. It was not the pause before a debate, girding oneself or a challenge. It was something else. And it continued and continued, steady and even. 

Finally, she looked up, watching his face. She was not sure what had changed in him and for him, but something had. "Why are you here?" 

"You need help, lady." It was simple, unhurried. "I have spoken with Synesius." 

Hypatia frowned. She could not see the logic. 

"Your father was a great man, lady. He deserves a proper funeral, a grand procession. Mourners wailing and musicians and drums. But in this time, that is dangerous." He spoke slowly, cautiously, as if he did not want to insult her wits, but was not sure she would follow. 

She nodded. "I realised. A few days ago." 

There was a quick shift in his expression. Not a smile, he was too sober for that, but a flash of relief. "Synesius believes he can arrange matters. He is Christian, of a good family. They will listen to him where they will not listen to us. A quiet procession, in the early morning, and the proper rites at the tomb. Will you permit us, lady? To make the arrangements in thanks for your teaching, and for his?" 

Hypatia nodded. Just that. She was suddenly exhausted, so much that speech fled. Orestes looked at her, waited a minute, and then stood. "Let us know when it is time, lady. I will leave you to your rest." 

She heard him pause in the entry, speaking to Aspasius before he left.

***

Day by day, then hour by hour, her father sank further and further. He had taught her the power of rhetoric, of measured words, of building temples of knowledge and wisdom phrase by phrase. Now those words failed him. At times, his mind wandered, back to his childhood, to family and stories she barely knew. A snake, a crocodile, a hippopotamus, a sea voyage. Cousins and grandparents and students all long dead.

Twice, he took her for her mother, speaking to her in a way that made her shudder, the same kinds of words of love and lust that had been forced on her by others. Then, worse, came the babble, the sounds that made words in no language she knew. 

He died just before dawn. It had taken long enough the streets were quiet again, an uneasy quiet enforced by troops and cudgels. 

She took her last moments with him, placing the coin beneath his tongue, folding his hands, cleaning the terrible wounds on his head one last time, before she rose and turned "Send to Orestes and Synesius. Tell them it is time." 

She had her own obligations. Ritual offerings, cleansing, reflection. 

There was a slow trickle of visitors during that day, colleagues come at last to murmur a regret, the set phrases that meant little and illuminated less. The expected things were said, the social obligations of their class and community. She braced herself, hating the way this death not only took her father, but forced her back into the role of lady of the house, small and fenced in by expectation. 

Her students, though, they came, Orestes and Synesius first and foremost. They were there the next morning at dawn, to lead a small procession out of the city, along the road, to the tombs. They were there when she poured wine and oil, lit lamps, and made all the necessary prayers. 

She did not believe, not in anything beyond philosophy, but she knew the rites had mattered to her father, and so she would do them as perfectly as she did a mathematical proof. Her father had admired precision and attention to detail, and that last gift she could give him. 

Her pupils escorted her home, and in that house, now far too quiet, they left her, murmuring "There is talk of establishing a school again. We will let you know what we hear."

***

A month passed, then two. She met with the man her father had selected to handle legal decisions if he should die. He made it clear that his role was to approve her decisions, and see to those that others would hear more easily from a man than from a woman. He was one of her father's former pupils, and he mercifully understood what she needed and what she did not wish to spell out by first principles.

There were land holdings to see to, some to sell, others to rearrange. When trade began to flow in the city again, she saw to building up storerooms of supples that would last, wine and oil and grain in great containers. The improvement of cisterns near them, repairs to the house, reinforcements at doors and windows. She reclaimed her home, fragment by fragment, turning into a space she felt somewhat safer. p

There would be further trouble. She knew philosophy and geometry far better than history, but she knew her history well enough to be sure this was not the last time there would be blood and slaughter in the streets. 

It was mid-afternoon, and she had been puzzling over the accounts for several hours, when she heard Aspasius. "Mistress? Orestes asks if you have time to speak with him." 

It was a welcome relief. He had not come to see her, not often, but he had sent messages every few days. After the first awkward few, they had turned into something more thoughtful. Scrolls to add to her personal library that he had found. Summaries of debates among former students. Mentions of which shops had good stores of wine or fruit or spices this week. 

"Lady." He looked much better. He had slept, he was not so rough and raw around the edges. 

"Orestes." She gestured, then murmured for the slaves to bring food and drink. 

"I am going away for some months, and I wished to see you before I went." 

"Away?" That startled her. 

"My family feels I might well be appointed as prefect, but I must go to Rome, make connections. Impress the right people." 

It seemed absurd to her. "You?" 

He spread his hands. "I know this city. Our current prefect does not, does not understand how we are. How we were, and should be again." 

Hypatia looked at him, slowly. Something had changed in him, his orbit no longer wandering but steady. He had shifted from one of the planets to a fixed star, without her being there to see it and understand it. 

"How long?"

"Months, at least. A year or more, perhaps, beyond the journey. I have cousins, in Rome. They can introduce me to the right people. They attend on the emperor regularly." 

"And your philosophy?" 

"Must be set aside, at least for a time. Oh, I will keep up, as much as I can. And there have been philosophers among the emperors, a prefect can surely do as well." 

She laughed, realising only as she did so that it was the first time since. Since everything. 

He smiled at her. "I would ask your blessing, lady. For the travel, and for the intention." 

"I am no priestess, to give or share the gods. And in this time...."

"Oh, not that. But is there a flaw in my logic? In my plan?" 

"Ah. That - let me consider. Will you come upstairs with me, to the roof? So I may think better, with stick in hand?" 

He looked curious, but nodded. "Of course, lady. My afternoon is yours." 

They went, step by step. He walked beside her, not in front or behind, he did not offer arm or hand, or venture any touch or intimacy. Once they stood on the rooftop, he blinked at the great pit of sand. "This is new, lady?" The stonework had not yet weathered at all. 

"Quite new. It is safer to research here." 

"Will you take students again, lady?"

"I think so. But here, in my home, more privately. I have taught young women, in the past, and they wish to be taught again. Young men, as well." 

"Do write Synesius and the others. They would be glad to return." 

"It is complex, you understand. Hosting many here." 

"Have you had trouble with your slaves, lady?" This was cautiously offered. "So many have." 

How could she explain what Davus had done, nearly done, wanted to do and barely turned away from. "Some fled. One, I freed. Some were injured, or already old and frail. I do not wish to burden them." 

"We are closing up the house here, while I am gone. My mother will go to her sister’s. May I offer my slaves? You need not find space for them, they can stay at the house, we are not so far away." 

She frowned, considered. "You think I should continue to teach, then. Not just a few."

"I would be a far worse man, lady, if you had not, and my - our - brothers in knowledge, as well. If you are willing, I would see it so." There was something cautious in him now he'd learned the dangers of rapid calls to action. 

Hypatia nodded, considering, and then shifted, explaining a bit of her currently struggle with circles and lines, orbits and paths, letting the puzzle sooth them both with the sheer normality and habit, while she considered his larger question. 

An hour later, they were no further in the puzzle, but she concluded her thought, then said "I do give you my blessing, for what it is worth, on your travel and your goal. You wish to be better, and that is all we can wish for, in those who share the emperor's word and will with his empire." 

Orestes ducked his head, and she smiled. "Write. And don't ignore your studies entirely. I wish to know what they are saying in Rome, you hear?"

***

The letters came regularly, as regularly as the ships that carried them. Some months she had one a week, other times a gap then a cluster of half a dozen all at once. She wrote back, the same way. To him, she confided the challenges.

Some families were wary of any association with the Musaeum. The Christians did not approve of certain kinds of education, or in many cases of women learning, of being outside the home. There were small outbreaks of violence flaring somewhere in the vast city nearly every week. 

But slowly, steadily, she built up a body of students again. Slowly, she began to look upwards, to engage with the heavens once more. Part of her resented that they continued in their course, uncaring of the wounds and losses below. And part of her clung to the steadfast security there, and the unending puzzles and questions they posed. 

Young women gathered in the mornings. Men, after lunch. They had turned the banqueting hall into a lecture space, a dais for her to stand on, filled with models to illustrate her points. It was not the Musaeum, nothing ever would be, but the more she taught, the more she lectured, the more it felt as it should, a place of brotherhood and sisterhood and peace. 

A year and a half after Orestes left, she was lecturing on the question of orbits, the question she kept coming back to. The simple answers, that the circle ruled all, no longer satisfied. She found herself saying "This does not seem right, but what other principle would we put in its place?" 

It was his laugh she heard first. She looked to the side, the door, to find Orestes leaning against the frame, tanned and golden from a long sea journey. "Lady, you admit you do not know all!" 

She spread her hands. "I never claimed to." But there was a laugh in her voice. "Brothers and sisters, this is our brother Orestes, returned home from Rome. Make space for him, do." They moved to let him sit, he was brought wine, and she continued. They found no more answers that day than any other, but she enjoyed the questions he asked. 

Only once the others had made their farewells and left, did she turn back to him. "Will you stay for supper?" 

"With pleasure, lady." His eyes glowed. "I fear, though, I will not have overmuch time for leisure in the days to come, so I must take it now." 

"Oh?"

"You see before you the next Prefect of Alexandria. And I have such plans, lady, for so many things." 

"Come, then. Sit. Tell me about it."

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt for this asked to see more of Hypatia and Orestes, and how they got from the first half of the movie to the second. 
> 
> For those not familiar with the film, it basically exists in two halves, one up to the fall of the Musaeum and the rise of Christianity as the dominant religious force in the city, and the second half leading to Hypatia's brutal death. Hypatia of Alexandria is one of my favourite historical figures (not least because she's often misunderstood and misrepresented), and I love this film for dealing with some of those complications, and with some very realistic choices about set design, clothing, and so on. 
> 
> The movie is unclear about the passage of time between the fall of the Musaeum and the second half, where Orestes is prefect. The historical dates suggest it's about a decade, the movie implies it's less than that. I went with an unspecified time in the middle, as a result, that could be anything from two years to five or so.


End file.
